Noon Computing networks include nodes which communicate over network connections. Each node includes at least a processor and a memory; a node may also include a display, other peripheral devices, special-purpose hardware, and other structures. Networked computers are nodes, and so are networked vehicles, buildings, devices and other items in the Internet of Things. The term “connection” is used broadly here to mean any network construct which sends or receives data between nodes. Connections may be free of low-level error checking, as with User Datagram Protocol (UDP) so-called “connectionless” transmission connections, or connections may be more reliable, as with Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections. Connections may be secured by authentication or by encryption mechanisms, or both, or neither. The nodes being connected may be part of a single Local Area Network (LAN), or they may reside in widely separated physical locations that communicate through a Wide Area Network (WAN) such as the Internet.
Without connections, networks have only severely limited usefulness. Although a given set of connections is often relatively easy to establish, the set of desired connections is not generally permanent. Connections are continually being established or re-established, to balance loads or provide redundancy, for example, or as nodes join a network, or after nodes restart their network software or reboot completely.
As computing networks continue to grow in size, in complexity, in flexibility, and in their fields of use, new kinds of connections emerge, as do new opportunities to benefit from connections. Accordingly, new technologies for reducing the time needed to establish or re-establish connections between network nodes are worth careful consideration.